Blender Plugin Useful for Everyone (Hipsters and Programmers too)

[Pancakes]

Hi guys, you've seen people like afecelis making great blender tutorials and perhaps in the past you've ignored them because you're a programmer who isn't interested in modeling/texturing/animating or you didn't see the usefulness of blender in your workflow because of your Ultimate Unwrap license. However seeing as the blender plugin goal of 30k has been reached by Leadwerks Kickstarter I feel that the equation may have shifted for many if not all of you, only you may not have realized it yet. I am typing this out as a way of giving you a little overview of what blender may have to offer you as its plugin undergoes development.

 

Blender is Opensource, and therefore Created by Programmers and Hipsters

I feel that this point deserves to be at the top of the list considering that over 90% of Leadwerks forum members are either Programmer or Hipster (or both). Joking aside, what I mean is that some of you guys haven't upgraded your Windows since what Windows 98? Windows XP? Many of you also sideboard Linux or perhaps you only run Windows when you have to. My point is that people like that want to have control over their hardware and their software and there is no better way of doing that than to incorporate open source code into your daily life. Blender is open source and it was created and is maintained to this day, by people JUST LIKE YOU. Blender is a tinkerers/coders wet dream, and also considering that it has a much heavier than normal focus on game production in its design than other 3d packages such as Max/Maya, it is also a game developer's software. Tinkering + Game development. Hmmm. I'm trying to tempt you.

 

It's not just for "Artists"

For those of you who don't want to learn modeling or animation, blender still has usefulness. There are many beautiful effects that you can make for your game without having to know anything about modeling. Many 3d assets that need to be made can be made with procedural knowledge that doesn't require any 'art' background whatsoever. Particle effects, physics simulations, mesh decimation just as strong as Zbrush's decimation script (for turning your assets into destructable assets), cinematic tools, city generator scripts, tree generator scripts, the list goes on and on. And since many of you are programmers you can go in and tinker with these scripts or write new code of your own from scratch. You have full control to customize blender for your needs.

 

Blender Will Save you Time and Money

For those of you who have been depending on Ultimate Unwrap for editing the timings on your animations or finding your bones or manipulating the UVs of models that you have purchased, blender is, especially now, the most logical upgrade that you can make for your Leadwerks endevours. If you guys already know about bone structures and UVs and normals, you owe it to yourself to utilize a more powerful software that is more capable and flexible, and that is what Blender is. When you purchase an asset, you should be able to edit it anyway you want. Blender will allow you to get the most from your art asset investments. Want to make that Space Marine you bought into a Space Pirate? Just slap on an eyepatch. Want to turn that general store exterior you just downloaded into a strip club or a gun shop, just slap on a new billboard and you are well on your way to getting the most out of your investments.

 

Blenderartists.org is a Great Place to Get a Feel for the Blender software and Community

For anyone who is interested in incorporating blender into their workflow. I suggest Blender.org for downloading the software, but Blenderartists.org for learning more. Just go there, tell them about why you are there, I'm sure plenty of them would be interested, and ask them whatever you want. Ask them about notable blender projects in the past, notable blender projects of the future. I think you might be a little surprised as what lies at the deep end of the rabbit hole.

 

Again, I only say this because I REALLLY think it is a good thing for just about everyone here. Congrats to all on the blender plugin. I've said what I could say. I wanted to be able to say it better because I think it would help many of you guys to get involved with blender. Please note I didn't get too specific on what the plugin will do because honestly I don't know yet. =p But basically this is just a heads up, get ready, this may be something that you find very useful.

[YouGroove]

didn't see the usefulness of blender in your workflow because of your Ultimate Unwrap license

That's like that i think with non 3D artists for conversion models, adjusting UVs etc ...

Yes Blender is far away lot more complete than little tools, but it remains for 3D artists.

 

For programmers and free solutions i would say :

Solid geometry : Google Sketchup (collada export), it's incredibly simple and enought good for houses and stuff

Character sculpting body (without items) : Sculptris , same incredibly simple and powerfull enought to make basic shapes.

 

 

Using Blender even just for solid modeling and for a new comer, will require with Blender 2.6 some learning curve for interface (switch edit/object modes, switch to UV editing and how it works), same for animation , once you get it , it's for life

 

That's a shame, for 2.5 and above, they kept same Blender philosophy, and interface and almost same icons, new panel on left make it better for some people indeed. They stay far away from simplicity and icons of some applications like Maya :

 

 

 

Bonus :

A really good video on Blender rigging/animation even with Inverse Kinematics that makes animating lot more fast and easy :

 

 

@Pancakes :

Don't try to tranform programmers on 3D artists

Yes the tutorials section has all to learn Blender easy

[Pancakes]

I don't expect most people to listen to me. But if there is just that one guy/girl new to Leadwerks coming to the forum and wondering what is this blender stuff, then it was worth it =p

 

Anyways I can't complain we're getting a blender plugin.

 

I'm out of words for trying to convert the masses. Instead I'll have to try to pull a shadmar/Josh/solar lune and just strive for personal awesomeness.

[Neuro]

I come from max/maya background, these days, I use blender, I've never used Ultimate Unwrap.

 

Although blender is incredibly powerful and fully featured, it is often more difficult than other programs to use because so many of the options can only be accessed through hot keys.

 

In terms of the smaller scale game dev community I do think blender is the best option, its open-source and free.

 

I think blender is inevitably going to have to do something to help this problem it has with its user friendliness, whether that’s simplify the hotkey system, with something like the "space bar" menu maya has, more graphical ui buttons or some other more efficient means of getting to the tools. It can be a bit of a burden for a new or casual user because you're likely to forget a lot of the hotkeys.

 

 

. Just a note on ultimate unwrap, I've noticed a lot of people accompanying UV software with larger packages that already contain those features simply because the UV software gets rid of all the unrelated features and makes the UI easier to look out (without having new features of its own).

[cassius]

Most le2 users used uu3d for its file conversion aspect rather than its unwrap features. But I agree with neuro about Blender.

[paramecij]

...or you didn't see the usefulness of blender in your workflow because of your Ultimate Unwrap license.

Actually, It's the other way around You don't see the usefulness of UU3D because of your superior modelling skills. You don't have to pay some shady but affordable anonymous modeler on the web for a pair of animated fps hands, the result of which is a single .fbx file which insta crashes blender upon import and results in a vomit of triangles in 3dsmax. In those situations UU3D + fragmotion are irreplaceable tools for saving the day (and your investments), a real must have if you source your models from thegamecreators, arteria3d, dexsoft, turbosquid or MrRandomAsian3DModellerGuy and the likes..

I see it more as a specialists tool rather then a major workflow component, like a heavy hammer you bring out when you need to bash some naughty 3d files into submission.. I doubt many people use UU to do any real work with it (ie, unwraping models), mainly just for format conversion, reliable mesh with skeleton/animation scaling and "bug fixing".

 

 

 

Anyway, I'm already sold on blender and am a big fan. I think blender is more a power user like program since it has more hotkeys than an old school flight sim (not surprising, OSS people are mostly power users themselves), and I do believe that blender will eventually turn into a 3dsmax+Zbrush+Premiere+AfterEffects+Photoshop power house, judging how it's developing now. It has a very healthy development cycle and is making much better progress then for example max and maya do.

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While I also advertise and recommend blender on many occasions, I believe it has finally gained enough momentum to keep going on it's own. It's starting to get used in big/serious productions, and has become the standard in various 3d indie/mod/amateur/enthusiasts communities. It's impossible for new generations of modelers to miss it due to not hearing about it, while the current and the old don't use it either because they already settled on something that works for them or by choice (we all have different tastes & preferences).

 

Where I don't see blender get enough recognition is perhaps in video/film communities. Blender has good video editing capabilities (NLE), tracking and a super awesome node based compositor. Not many people seem to know or talk about this side of blender.

Tears of Steel - a short sci-fi movie made entirely in blender:

 

 

All that said, now that I'm actually "stuck" with using blender, I kind of miss 3dsmax ... I started with blender long before I learned 3dsmax at work, and it took me a couple of tutorials and a few weeks until I became proficient in max. And I'm still not at home with blender and it's interface, I have to think too much about it when I work in it - which border to split, where to find that option, are the top icons part of this view or the bottom ones, what's that hotkey again etc (me trying to work in blender via hotkeys is like an elephant walking in a porcelain shop - things get wrecked very quickly

[codeape]

I don't expect most people to listen to me. But if there is just that one guy/girl new to Leadwerks coming to the forum and wondering what is this blender stuff, then it was worth it =p

 

I have played around with blender a long time ago. I was thinking of buying models however I will give it a try again =)